`O Canada' becoming popular tune

Low college costs lure U.S. students

May 08, 2001|By Amy Argetsinger, The Washington Post.

With a resume full of A's and honors, Mary Szwajkowski might have had her pick of colleges. But she wanted to break from the pack of Centreville High School classmates migrating to Virginia state schools. And she wanted something affordable, which ruled out private colleges.

So her choices have come down to the public universities of Texas and ... Canada.

"I'm looking for something different," said Szwajkowski, 18, who is weighing an offer from Montreal's McGill University. "It's almost like study abroad, but for four years."

For decades, large numbers of Canadian students have crossed the border in pursuit of U.S. college degrees. Now, a three-year marketing blitz by Canada's premier universities is starting to lure a small but sharply expanding number of U.S. students northward.

From 1997 to 2000, U.S. enrollment at 29 colleges surveyed by the Canadian Embassy grew 74 percent, from 2,246 to 3,906.

Schools such as McGill, the University of Toronto and Queen's University, which a generation ago carried little cachet in the United States, are drawing a closer look from top U.S. students at a time of larger graduating classes and increasingly brutal competition for slots at name-brand schools at home.

In Canada, they find colleges known for high standards and rigorous academics but a surprisingly laid-back admissions process--few essays required, no brag sheet of awards and activities expected.

The big appeal is the bargain prices in a nation where almost all colleges are publicly subsidized. A year of tuition for a U.S. student at a Canadian school is roughly $4,000 to $6,000, compared with an average $16,332 for an equivalent education at U.S. private institutions, not including room and board.

Cross-border recruiting marks a culture shift for Canada, where higher education remains a local affair and even A-list colleges draw mostly from their own provinces. Priorities changed in recent years when Canadian officials began openly fretting about a "brain drain"; 23,544 Canadian undergraduate and graduate students pursued degrees in the United States last year, up from 17,870 a decade ago. Budget cuts in the mid-1990s prompted Canadian colleges to widen their search for revenue, while deregulation of tuition rates allowed them to offer cheaper packages to foreign students.

The University of Guelph in Ontario received U.S. media attention for the humorous brochure it sent to 50,000 U.S. students. It included a photo of a blue-lipped, snow-covered student asking, "So you think you know Canada, eh?"

In 1998, Ontario's University of Windsor, just minutes from Detroit, slashed tuition for U.S. students from $12,000 Canadian to $3,800 Canadian. It expects to enroll 65 U.S. students this fall; a few years ago, it had none.

In 1997, McGill joined with the University of Toronto, Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver to market themselves as the "Canadian Ivies."

Since then, "we've been very present in the U.S.," sending recruiters to U.S. high schools and college fairs, said Florence Silver, director of student recruitment at the University of Toronto.

The big winner in the chase for U.S. students might be McGill, which now enrolls 1,400, up 60 percent since 1996, said admissions officer Danielle Bennett.

At a recent Canadian Embassy event for families considering McGill, Washington-area students rhapsodized about Montreal's European flair and the excitement of crossing the border.

"I always wanted to learn French by immersion," said Michael Hackett, 17, of Parkville, Md. Plus, "the exchange rate is good." The Canadian dollar is trading for about 65 cents U.S.